Yearbook on candidate countries

Eurostat, the Statistical Office of the European Communities in Luxembourg, has published a new yearbook on candidate countries, including Malta.

The 257-page yearbook carries detailed statistical tables covering various topics.

For example, as for the EU average (90.2 per cent), English is the foreign language which is studied most in all the candidate countries, with Malta and Cyprus topping the list (100 per cent).

The exception is Romania where French is the most studied foreign language (88.5 per cent); Malta (41.1 per cent).

The employment rate for men is higher than the EU average (61 per cent) in all candidate countries, including Malta (74.7 per cent), except for Bulgaria (56.1 per cent).

The same applies to women (EU average is 42.3 per cent), except in Malta (32.6 per cent) and Turkey (46 per cent).

The highest proportion of people killed in road accidents is in Latvia (24.7 per 100,000 inhabitants), while the lowest is in Malta (3.9 per 100,000).